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In lieu thereof...

In light of systems maintenance that has already been put off for about one month, things could not be put off any longer. There is no episode this week. A new episode is expected to be released on May 30th. This happens. (Click "Read More" for the rest of the post)
From the slush pile the following news miscellany links are presented.

"For many areas around the world, it will be necessary to further development online and mobile services in order to reach DW’s target audience better: Individuals who are interested in diverse perspectives and use a large amount and variety of media resources. That especially includes opinion leaders and future opinion leaders as well as people who lobby for democracy, freedom and progress in authoritarian countries and thereby strengthen the civil society."

Bonn, Germany - The government-financed German broadcaster Deutsche Welle is to cease most of its shortwave broadcasts on July 1, with emphasis shifting to television broadcasts and the internet, the corporation said in Bonn Wednesday.

"In response to a question from Representative Steve Cohen about the influence of radio programming beamed into the countries by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Mr Goble said the US made a mistake abandoning shortwave broadcasts in favour of FM stations licensed by the repressive regimes in Central Asia. He said the stations practice self-censorship in order to retain their licences, defeating their purpose."

"At least some commenters on the piece have no doubt that scarcity is the engine of progress. As David Eyke, one of the column's first respondents, put it, 'Consumption pricing is ALWAYS the path to innovation and new inventions. And consumption pricing always leads to conservation of expensive resources. I hope everyone here understands that bandwidth capacity is very VERY expensive.'"

"As the Technologizer notes, the news archive is kind of clunky, and quite hard to find among Google's tabs, so a lack of viewers may be one reason the company decided to abandon the ancient archive exercise."

"The combination of low hiring and a large stock of unemployed workers, now 13.7 million, means that the competition for jobs is fierce. Because there are now many more unemployed workers, and because hiring is only about 70% of 2006 levels, a worker is about one-third as likely to find a job today as he or she was in 2006. It is no wonder that workers do not feel that the labor market has recovered."

"One of the saddest aspects of this entire sorry episode was explained well on my public radio station by Charlie Dyer, who pointed out that thanks to the stupidity of people like Camping, a whole host of people who might have been able to find some comfort, and sense of purpose as part of a religious community, will likely be turned off from religion."

"The Phoenix noted that Google's process of digitizing newspapers was criticized for being slow, and some of the materials that were submitted never even made their way online. There are some publications that have been scanned but have not yet been indexed in the archive, and it's unclear whether Google will complete this process."

"Koha 3.4.0 is a major feature release and contains a significant number of enhancements – including optimising the bibliographic record storage, significant performance enhancements, a M?ori language pack, enhancements to circulations and the OPAC."

"The conference theme is “Te Ihi, Te Wehi, Te Wana”. The loose concept in English is “Passion, People and Power”. We feel this reflects the need for the library profession to take responsibility for their own destiny and engage politically to influence their future."

"In Part I, this Article introduces the concept of virtual marketplaces of ideas, and explains their significance in the twenty-first century. In Part II, this Article examines the inadequacies of the public policy exceptions of the UCC, UCITA, and PLSC, and recommends courts apply the narrower Reichman/Franklin standard when dealing with 'mass-market contracts, non-negotiable access contracts, and contracts imposing non-negotiable restrictions on uses of computerized information goods[.]' In Part III, this Article concludes by offering an exception to a network neutrality proposal, which recognizes the need for a tiered Internet in a particular circumstance."